Clifford was browsing among the spools in the library, quietly listening to an old 22nd Century abstract on systems of land tenure in the Trianguli.
‘Hello, Margot, feel better now?’
Margot smiled at him coyly. ‘Clifford, I’m ashamed of myself. Do forgive me.’ She bent down and nuzzled his ear. ‘Sometimes I’m very selfish. Have you booked our tickets yet?’
Clifford disengaged her arm and straightened his collar. ‘I called the agency, but their bookings have been pretty heavy. They’ve got a double but no singles. We’ll have to wait a few days.’
‘No, we won’t,’ Margot exclaimed brightly. ‘Clifford, why don’t you and I take the double? Then we can really be together, forget all that ship-board nonsense about never having met before.’
Puzzled, Clifford switched off the player. ‘What do you mean?’
Margot explained. ‘Look, Clifford, I’ve been thinking that I ought to spend more time with you than I do at present, really share your work and hobbies. I’m tired of all these play-boys.’ She drooped languidly against Clifford, her voice silky and reassuring. ‘I want to be with you, Clifford. Always.’
Clifford pushed her away. ‘Don’t be silly, Margot,’ he said with an anxious laugh. ‘You’re being absurd.’
‘No, I’m not. After all, Harold Kharkov and his wife haven’t got a play-boy and she’s very happy.’
Maybe she is, Clifford thought, beginning to panic. Kharkov had once been the powerful and ruthless director of the Department of justice, now was a third-rate attorney hopelessly trying to eke out a meagre living on the open market, dominated by his wife and forced to spend virtually 24 hours a day with her. For a moment Clifford thought of the days when he had courted Margot, of the long dreadful hours listening to her inane chatter. Trantino’s real role was not to chaperone Margot while Clifford was away but while he was at home.
‘Margot, be sensible,’ he started to say, but she cut him short. ‘I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to tell Trantino to pack his suitcase and go back to the Guild.’ She switched on the spool player, selecting the wrong speed, smiling ecstatically as the reading head grated loudly and stripped the coding off the record. ‘It’s going to be wonderful to share everything with you. Why don’t we forget about the vacation this year?’
A facial tic from which Clifford had last suffered at the age often began to twitch ominously.
Tony Harcourt, Clifford’s personal assistant, came over to the Gorrells’ villa immediately after lunch. He was a brisk, polished young man, barely controlling his annoyance at being called back to work on the first day of his vacation. He had carefully booked a sleeper next to Dolores Costane, the most beautiful of the Jovian Heresiarch’s vestals, on board a leisure-liner leaving that afternoon for Venus, but instead of enjoying the fruits of weeks of blackmail and intrigue he was having to take part in what seemed a quite uncharacteristic piece of Gorrell whimsy.
He listened in growing bewilderment as Clifford explained.
‘We were going to one of our usual resorts on Luna, Tony, but we’ve decided we need a change. Margot wants a vacation that’s different. Something new, exciting, original. So go round all the agencies and bring me their suggestions.’
‘All the agencies?’ Tony queried. ‘Don’t you mean just the registered ones?’
‘All of them,’ Margot told him smugly, relishing every moment of her triumph.
Clifford nodded, and smiled at Margot benignly.
‘But there must be 50 or 60 agencies organizing vacations,’ Tony protested. ‘Only about a dozen of them are accredited. Outside Empyrean Tours and Union-Galactic there’ll be absolutely nothing suitable for you.’
‘Never mind,’ Clifford said blandly. ‘We only want an idea of the field. I’m sorry, Tony, but I don’t want this all over the Department and I know you’ll be discreet.’
Tony groaned. ‘It’ll take me weeks.’
‘Three days,’ Clifford told him. ‘Margot and I want to leave here by the end of the week.’ He looked longingly over his shoulder for the absent Trantino. ‘Believe me, Tony, we really need a holiday.’
Fifty-six travel and vacation agencies were listed in the Commercial Directory, Tony discovered when he returned to his office in the top floor of the Justice building in downtown Zenith, all but eight of them alien. The Department had initiated legal proceedings against five, three had closed down, and eight more were fronts for other enterprises.
That left him with forty to visit, spread all over the Upper and Lower Cities and in the Colonial Bazaar, attached to various mercantile, religious and paramilitary organizations, some of them huge concerns with their own police and ecclesiastical forces, others sharing a one-room office and transceiver with a couple of other shoestring firms.
Tony mapped out an itinerary, slipped a flask of Five-Anchor Neptunian Rum into his hip pocket and dialled a helicab.
